US 7006890

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number.

Let me run more targeted searches to check for litigation and CAFC activity.

Let me verify the litigation history and check specifically for any Federal Circuit 2026 appeal involving this patent.

Search Scope and Result of the CAFC / USPTO Lookup

Bottom line: I found no authoritative evidence of any Federal Circuit (CAFC) 2026 docket involving US patent 7,006,890. My searches specifically pairing the number 7006890 with "CAFC 2026 docket," "Federal Circuit appeal 2026," and "Monument Peak Ventures 2026" returned only unrelated matters. To comply with your instruction not to return similar numbers, I am explicitly flagging these false positives as NOT this patent:

• A listed "2015‑7006890" entry in an SCG Chemicals report — that is a Korean application number (Ethylene Polymerization), unrelated.
• Contour IP Holding LLC v. GoPro, Inc., Fed. Cir. No. 2026‑2012 (N.D. Cal. 3:17‑cv‑04738 / 3:21‑cv‑02143) — different patents entirely (e.g., a '954 patent).
• UPC Paris CFI 1594/2025 (SEB v. SharkNinja, EP 3 689 198 / EP 3 689 201) — a 2026 decision, but unrelated to this US patent.

I could not retrieve a live PACER/CAFC docket record tying 7,006,890 to a 2026 appeal, and the tool cap was reached before I could exhaustively check the district-court dockets. I do not have high-confidence information that a CAFC 2026 appeal exists for this patent; treat the absence of CAFC 2026 activity as unverified rather than confirmed.

One structural reason to doubt a live 2026 appeal: the patent's anticipated expiration is 2003‑12‑03 + 20 years = 2023‑12‑03, and Google Patents lists it as "Expired – Lifetime." A 2026 appeal would therefore only concern accrued past damages or collateral issues, which is possible but less common.

Bibliographic Summary (US 7,006,890)

Chain of title (per the assignment/legal-events record): Eastman Kodak → (releases/security interests via Citicorp North America as agent) → Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC (recorded 2013‑04‑19) → Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (recorded 2017‑03‑09, effective 2017‑02‑15); a "Release by Secured Party" to Monument Peak Ventures was recorded 2023‑08‑15.

Litigation noted on the face of the record (family flagged as "has litigation"): E.D. Tex. 4:21‑cv‑00683; E.D. Tex. 2:23‑cv‑00127; W.D.N.Y. 6:20‑cv‑06263; plus a first worldwide family litigation entry (Darts‑ip family 34633340). Note: I could not independently confirm which specific patents were asserted in each of those cases; the patent bibliography reports the litigation association, not the asserted claims.

Abstract (as printed)

"A method, system, and computer software program for controlling operation of a photofinishing lab having a plurality of output devices for producing a plurality of different output products for a plurality of different job orders wherein each of the output devices capable of outputting one or more of the plurality of different output products. The system includes a controller for monitoring and controlling operations of the plurality of different output devices with respect to the job orders in queue. A display device connected to the controller displays the operational status of each of the plurality of the output devices in a predetermined format. The controller producing a visual indication when the operational efficiency reaches a predetermined criteria and automatically adjusting the operational status of at least one of the plurality of output devices or prep device for in response to reaching the predetermined criterion."

The Granted Patent Has 12 Claims — Three Independent Claims

Per the authoritative text, "Claims (12)" are printed. Under the granted claim set, the independent claims are 1, 5, and 9; claims 2–4 depend on 1, 6–8 depend on 5, and 10–12 depend on 9.

Claim 1 — System (independent). A system for running a photofinishing lab with many output devices, each able to make one or more output products. It requires (a) a controller that monitors and controls the devices, watching each device's operational configuration and at least one criterion about the job orders in queue; and (b) a display device showing each device's operational status in a predetermined format that includes (i) the current configuration status of the devices and (ii) the current backlog of job orders in queue for each of the different output products. The controller both produces a visual indication when the lab's operational efficiency reaches a predetermined criterion AND automatically adjusts the operational status of at least one output device in response — i.e., the automation (not just an alarm) is a required element.

Claim 5 — Method (independent). The method counterpart: monitor the devices via the controller with respect to queued job orders; display each device's status in the same predetermined format (current configuration status + current backlog per output product); and have the controller produce a visual indication when operational efficiency reaches a predetermined criterion and automatically adjust the operational status of at least one device in response to the monitoring.

Claim 9 — Computer software program (independent). A software program that, when loaded, causes the computer to perform the claim‑5 steps: monitor operations, display the device statuses in the specified format (configuration status + backlog per product), and have the controller produce a visual indication upon reaching a criterion and automatically adjust at least one device's operational status.

Dependent claims (plain language):

• 2 — the "operational efficiency" information is the number of job orders in queue at any device.
• 3 — that information is the shipping requirements of a job order.
• 4 — the criterion is one of: device operational efficiency; shipping information for queued orders; number of queued orders; time to complete queued orders.
• 6, 7, 8 — mirror 2, 3, 4 for the method claim (claim 6's text says "number job orders in queue").
• 10, 11, 12 — mirror 2/3/4 for the software claim.

Disclosure context supporting these claims: the specification describes a server (12), a controller (14), twenty output devices (20–39), an image-prep device (40), and a display (42) with a color-coded screen (44) — green = running/has enough printable jobs; yellow = not enough jobs; red = no jobs or no printable jobs (potential fault); gray = capability absent. The controller re-analyzes the queue on a periodic interval (the embodiment states about two minutes) and can redistribute queued jobs to balance load, meet a delivery-by time, match shipping method, or reroute away from an interrupted device.

Caveats and Uncertainties

1. Claim-set discrepancy (important). The published application US 2005/0125094 A1, as shown by third-party databases (Justia), appears to present a larger claim set (claims numbered through at least 17) with differently worded independents — e.g., a "redistributing … based on … at least one predetermined criterion" method and a "controller automatically balancing" system. The granted patent as provided is 12 claims with independents 1/5/9. I am treating the granted text as authoritative per your instruction, but this indicates substantial amendment/cancellation during prosecution that I have not independently verified from the file wrapper.
2. The patent's own "Summary of Invention" recites more aspects than the granted claims implement — notably a balancing/redistribution method and a prep-device acceleration method ("the controller accelerating the process of the image prep … to meet the need for additional job orders"). Those themes are prominent in the specification but do not appear as printed independent claims in the 12-claim grant. Do not assume they are separately claimed here.
3. Assignee entities. Google Patents lists both Monument Peak Ventures LLC and Kodak Imaging Network Inc under "current assignee," and its disclaimer notes listed assignees "may be inaccurate." Unified Patents separately lists the parent as Dominion Harbor Enterprises LLC. I cannot reconcile these with certainty.
4. No verified CAFC 2026 activity, as stated above. The district-court litigation references on the record (4:21‑cv‑00683; 2:23‑cv‑00127; 6:20‑cv‑06263) are stated on the patent bibliography without a verified tie to specific asserted claims, and none of the 2026 items my searches surfaced belong to this patent.

Sources used: the authoritative full patent text you supplied (Google Patents, US7006890B2, fetched 2026‑09‑24); FreePatentsOnline https://www.freepatentsonline.com/7006890.html; Justia https://patents.justia.com/patent/20050125094; Unified Patents https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/7006890; and docket/PTAB aggregators for Monument Peak Ventures (dockets.justia.com; ipverse.greyb.com).

I'll research litigation involving US 7006890. Let me start with several targeted searches.

Let me dig into the specific case numbers from the patent record.

Let me verify the specific patents-in-suit and check for additional '890 cases.

Litigation involving US Patent No. 7,006,890 (US 7006890 B2)

Important preliminary note on the identifier: The patent's granted number is 7,006,890 (also written US 7006890 B2). Note that US 7,006,890 is a different patent from the frequently co-asserted US 7,684,090 (the "'090 patent," a camera/docking-printer patent). I have kept these distinct throughout and have excluded cases involving only 7,684,090. (The two are commonly confused in these dockets because Monument Peak Ventures asserted both against Xerox.)

I found three (3) district court cases in which US 7,006,890 was placed at issue. This matches the family-litigation listing on the patent's Google Patents page (which lists exactly three: E.D. Tex. 4:21-cv-00683, E.D. Tex. 2:23-cv-00127, W.D.N.Y. 6:20-cv-06263). I found no CAFC appeal and no PTAB proceeding that reached the '890 patent's claims.

1. Xerox Corporation v. Monument Peak Ventures, LLC

• Plaintiff: Xerox Corporation
• Defendant: Monument Peak Ventures, LLC ("MPV")
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court, Western District of New York (Judge Frank P. Geraci, Jr.); later transferred to the Eastern District of Texas (Judge Sean D. Jordan)
• Case numbers: 6:20-cv-06263 (W.D.N.Y.) → after transfer, 4:21-cv-00683 (E.D. Tex.)
• Filing date: April 23, 2020 (served on MPV April 30, 2020)
• Nature: Declaratory judgment action for non-infringement under 28 U.S.C. § 2201. Xerox sought a declaration that it does not infringe eight patents: 5,923,908; 6,157,436; 6,215,559; 6,396,599; 6,873,336; 7,006,890; 7,092,966; and 7,684,090. Xerox's complaint describes MPV as a Dominion Harbor–affiliated NPE that acquired the former Kodak portfolio via Intellectual Ventures.
• Outcome/status:
  • Aug. 18, 2020 — MPV's motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction denied without prejudice; the court granted Xerox limited jurisdictional discovery (2020 WL 4805736).
  • Aug. 31, 2021 — On renewed motion, the court granted dismissal for lack of personal jurisdiction and transferred the case to the E.D. Tex. under 28 U.S.C. § 1631.
  • Sept. 1, 2021 — Case docketed in E.D. Tex. as 4:21-cv-00683. On the same day, MPV filed its own infringement suit against Xerox in E.D. Tex. (2:21-cv-00345, below).
  • Sept. 2, 2021 — Xerox filed a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i); the case was dismissed without prejudice and terminated. So this case ended with no merits ruling on the '890 patent.

2. Monument Peak Ventures, LLC v. Xerox Corporation

• Plaintiff: Monument Peak Ventures, LLC
• Defendant: Xerox Corporation
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas (Marshall Division), Judges J. Rodney Gilstrap / Roy S. Payne
• Case number: 2:21-cv-00345
• Filing date: September 1, 2021
• Patents asserted (6): 6,810,149; 6,873,336; 7,006,890; 7,092,573; 7,092,966; 7,684,090. MPV's P.R. 3-1 infringement contentions (served Nov. 4, 2021) chart the '890 patent and the '090 patent against various Xerox copier/printer products (e.g., D95/D110/D125, WorkCentre 7655/7665/7675/7755/7765/7775, 4110/4590, DocuColor 240–260, PrimeLink B9100, Versant, Color C60/C70, Color 550/560/570).
• Related PTAB activity: Xerox filed IPR2022-00318 (petition dated Dec. 15, 2021) against U.S. 7,684,090 — not the '890 patent. That IPR was instituted and then terminated by settlement after institution (35 U.S.C. § 317). I found no IPR filed against US 7,006,890.
• Outcome/status: Closed (per RPX/Ex Parte docket data, June 9, 2022). The record indicates the parties settled (MPV dismissed its '090 claim, which prompted the joint motion to terminate IPR2022-00318). I could not independently confirm via PACER whether the '890 claim was dismissed with or without prejudice. Treat the exact disposition as unverified.

3. Monument Peak Ventures, LLC v. Kyocera Corporation

• Plaintiff: Monument Peak Ventures, LLC
• Defendant: Kyocera Corporation (and related Kyocera entities)
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas
• Case number: 2:23-cv-00127
• Filing date: March 27, 2023
• Patents asserted (5): U.S. 7,006,890 and four others (the Patsnap record lists, in addition to the '890 patent's title "System and method for managing work load distribution among a plurality of image output devices," the patents titled "Camera and method for operating a camera based upon available power in a supply," "Digital image processing system and method for emphasizing a main subject of an image," "Electronic camera including color tone adjustment of a real-time image," and "Method and system for selectively applying enhancement to an image").
• Outcome/status: Closed December 14, 2023 — dismissed with prejudice (262 days after filing; no merits adjudication recorded). This date coincides with the '890 patent's expiration (anticipated expiration December 3, 2023).

Summary table

Caveats and verification notes

• No merits ruling on the '890 patent's validity or infringement appears in any of the three cases — all three terminated by transfer + voluntary dismissal, settlement, or dismissal with prejudice.
• No CAFC appeal involving US 7,006,890 was found.
• No IPR/PGR challenging the claims of US 7,006,890 was found (the PTAB petitions in this campaign targeted sibling patents such as 7,684,090, 7,092,573, 7,212,668, and 6,282,317).
• I could not access PACER directly in this session. The findings are grounded in: Google Patents' litigation listing for US 7,006,890 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7006890/en); the Unified Patents patent page for 7006890 (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/7006890), which lists the same three cases; the Xerox DJ complaint in 6:20-cv-06263 (Docket Alarm / Justia); the E.D. Tex. docket excerpts in UniCourt for 4:21-cv-00683 and 2:21-cv-00345; Xerox's motion to dismiss/transfer in 2:21-cv-00345; the PTAB petition and mandatory-notice filings in IPR2022-00318 (ptacts.uspto.gov); and Patsnap's litigation record for 2:23-cv-00127. Where a source states "pending" (e.g., early UniCourt snapshots), I have used the later disposition data, but the exact dismissal terms in 2:21-cv-00345 should be confirmed against PACER if precision matters.
• Note the § 2201 declaratory-judgment posture of the Xerox case: Xerox was the plaintiff/non-infringement declarant, and MPV was the defendant accused patentee — a reversal of the usual "patentee sues accused infringer" alignment.
• Also note the patent's current owner of record: Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (via Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC from Eastman Kodak, with Dominion Harbor Enterprises identified as the parent entity in Xerox's pleadings). The Google Patents page lists "Monument Peak Ventures LLC" and "Kodak Imaging Network Inc" as current assignees and "Eastman Kodak Co" as original assignee.

I'll verify the absence of PTAB proceedings against live sources before reporting.

Let me run targeted searches to confirm no AIA trial was ever filed against this specific patent number.

Let me check the distinct possibility of a CBM (this is a workflow/business-method-flavored patent) and confirm the litigation record.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings — the USPTO Open Data Portal block reports no IPR, PGR, or CBM ever filed against US 7,006,890, and independent web searching surfaced no petition, institution decision, FWD, or Federal Circuit appeal naming this patent; the bottom-line defensive posture is that the patent arrives at your desk un-narrowed but also expired — so there is no IPR-based attack to inherit and no live estoppel to exploit, but equally no claim has ever been canceled, meaning any invalidity you want to run must be built from scratch, and your more urgent question is whether the patent's 2023-12-03 expiration already guts the damages case against you.

(no proceedings on file) — no petitioner v. Monument Peak Ventures, LLC as to US 7,006,890

• Type: N/A — no Inter Partes Review, Post-Grant Review, or Covered Business Method review was ever filed against this patent.
• Filed: N/A
• Status: The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block states the ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest. This is consistent with the docket record: no PTAB trial number exists to look up in PTAB E2E (PTAB Center / PTAB E2E). Third-party patent-intelligence profiles for this asset likewise record "Validity challenges: None recorded" (Unified Patents profile for US-7006890-B2).
• Judge panel: N/A — no panel ever convened.
• Petition grounds: N/A
• Institution decision: N/A
• Final Written Decision: N/A. No claim of this patent has ever been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the Board. I will not quote claim-level dispositions because none exist.
• Settlement / termination: N/A at the Board. Note that the district court case in which this patent was asserted, MPV v. Kyocera (E.D. Tex. 2:23-cv-00127), was dismissed with prejudice on 2023-12-14 — eleven days after the patent's 2023-12-03 expiration date — with Kyocera never filing an IPR. The termination basis recorded is "Dismissed with Prejudice"; terms are not public. (Patsnap case record)
• Appeal: N/A — no Board decision to appeal, hence no CAFC docket.
• Defensive value: Because no petition was ever filed, no estoppel under 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) attaches to anyone as to this patent — you are free to raise any § 102/§ 103 ground, including art a hypothetical prior petitioner would have used, without estoppel risk. The flip side: you also inherit zero work product and zero claim-construction record from the Board.

Documentation caution — three traps that look like PTAB activity on this patent but are not

These came up repeatedly in searching and are the exact confusions that produce bad invalidity charts and bad demand-letter responses. Flagging them so you don't cite them as though they were about US 7,006,890:

1. US 7,684,090 ≠ US 7,006,890. Xerox Corporation petitioned for IPR of claims 1-3, 5, 7, & 10 of U.S. Patent No. 7,684,090 B2, also owned by Monument Peak Ventures, LLC. That is a different patent (containing an extra digit) on a docking-station-camera invention, not the Foygel photofinishing-workflow patent. See the Xerox petition text.
2. The Xerox declaratory-judgment exhibit list. Xerox's DJ complaint, filed 2021-09-01 as 4:21-cv-00683 (E.D. Tex.), attaches "Exhibit U.S. Patent No. 7,006,890" among a batch of MPV patents. That makes '890 a district-court exhibit, not a PTAB respondent patent. (Case record)
3. The MPV PTAB cluster is sibling patents. The Board has seen substantial MPV activity, but on other assets in the former Kodak/IV Fund 83 portfolio — e.g., IPR2019-01475 (Robert Bosch, LLC et al. v. MPV, US 7,035,461; filed 2019-09-05, instituted 2020-03-23, terminated-settled 2020-08-28 under 35 U.S.C. § 317 / 37 C.F.R. § 42.74 with the settlement agreement filed as confidential business information, case detail); a GE petition on US 7,092,573; a petition on US 7,583,294; and a petition on US 7,212,668. None of these is US 7,006,890. Do not describe them as activity "on this patent."

Strategic summary

Claim status: all of claims 1-12 are UNTESTED. There is no canceled-claim carve-out to hand you, and no surviving-claim list to narrow your design-around. Every claim — the system claims 1-4, the method claims 5-8 (including the claim 5 "automatically adjusting" step), and the computer-software claims 9-12 — remains exactly as issued on 2006-02-28. If you are looking for an "if your demand letter cites claims 1-5, the troll has no case" argument, that argument does not exist here; it would be fabrication to assert it.

The far more consequential fact is expiration. Per the structured record, the patent carries an anticipated expiration of 2023-12-03 and a current status of Expired - Lifetime; the Google Patents record likewise flags "2023-12-03 Anticipated expiration." As of today (2026-10-01), the enforceable term is over. That converts your exposure analysis from "design-around or invalidate" to "how far back can past damages reach." Under 35 U.S.C. § 286, a complaint filed now reaches back at most six years — roughly 2020-10-01 — but the recovery window is capped by the 2023-12-03 expiry, giving at most a ~three-year band of potentially compensable conduct, and only for accused activity occurring during that band and after the defendant had notice. The Kyocera dismissal (2023-12-14, days after expiry) is consistent with a portfolio being wound down at end of term rather than an assertion posture you should expect to continue.

Estoppel landscape: wide open, which cuts both ways. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel applies only to a petitioner that obtained an institution decision. No one did here, so no defendant anywhere is estopped from any ground on this patent — you may run § 102, § 103, and (in district court, though not in IPR per Samsung v. Prisua) § 112 challenges on any art, whether or not it was "reasonably could have been raised" by somebody else. There is also no adverse Board claim construction to escape, but correspondingly no favorable one to adopt. Two practical caveats for a 2026 filing: (i) IPR against an expired patent is legally permissible but tactically hollow, since there is no injunction to defeat and only a stale damages tail to shorten — the cost/benefit rarely closes; and (ii) current PTO practice has moved toward restricting institution against older patents on "settled expectations" grounds, a change being hotly contested in the courts as of this writing (see the Unified Patents amicus brief in No. 25-1230, filed 2026-05-29 — a litigant's advocacy position, not a statement of settled law). Either way, an IPR is not your first move.

Pattern signals. MPV (successor to Intellectual Ventures Fund 83, which took the asset from Eastman Kodak in 2013-04-19; recorded parent-company affiliation with Dominion Harbor Enterprises LLC) ran a broad Kodak-inherited portfolio campaign in 2019-2023 across E.D. Tex., C.D. Cal., W.D.N.Y., and D. Del., drawing Bosch, GE, Xerox, and Toshiba IPRs on other patents. Notably, no defendant ever chose to petition against this patent — a signal, weak but real, that the photofinishing-workflow claims were seen as low-value or low-priority targets rather than as strong patents worth the filing fee to kill. The defensive aggregator relevant to this patent's metadata is Unified Patents, which maintains a monitoring profile on it but shows no filed challenge. No CAFC appeal exists for this patent because no Board decision exists.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not link to an FWD — there isn't one. No PTAB Final Written Decision on US 7,006,890 exists, so there is no disposition to quote and no claim number to quote from it. If an opponent or a prior vendor's invalidity report cites a "PTAB decision on the '890 patent," demand the proceeding number; it will almost certainly turn out to be US 7,684,090, 7,583,294, 7,212,668, 7,092,573, or 7,035,461 — all different patents in the same MPV portfolio.
2. Lead with expiration, not invalidity. Confirm the term by pulling the USPTO PatentCenter maintenance record and the expiration annotation (structured record: "Anticipated expiration 2023-12-03"; last maintenance-fee payment on 2018-02-28 covering the 12th year, and no 3.5-year post-2018 window remains). Then frame past-damages under § 286 with the recovery window closing at 2023-12-03.
3. There are no trial-stage milestones to calendar. Because no proceeding is pending, the PTAB § 316(a)(11) one-year deadline from institution, oral-hearing scheduling, and FWD due dates are all inapplicable. The only date that matters is the 2023-12-03 expiry.
4. If you nonetheless need a validity opinion (e.g., to support a fee award, an indemnity demand, or a DJ count), the absence of any prior PTAB art record means the prior-art search is fully open: the seven references cited on the face of the patent — US 4,167,322 (Ricoh); US 5,051,779 (Fuji Xerox); US 5,287,194 (Xerox, Distributed printing); US 5,339,168 (Xerox, Copier/duplicator network); US 5,689,755 (Sharp); US 6,104,468 (Eastman Kodak); US 6,157,436 (Eastman Kodak) — plus the § 101 exposure inherent in a 2003-era "monitor a queue, display a status screen, auto-reconfigure a workflow" system claim. Both are untested by the Board and untouched by any estoppel. See the full patent text for the claim set (claims 1-12) and the specification's admitted prior-art landscape.
5. Treat the absence itself as the signal. Well-asserted patents in an active NPE campaign eventually attract IPRs; this one was asserted against Kyocera in 2023 and drew nothing at the Board before expiring, and the case closed with prejudice in December 2023. For a 2026 assertion, that pattern argues for a short, expiry-focused response rather than a full validity campaign.

Caveat on sourcing: the proceeding-count statement rests on the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (canonical, ODP-sourced) plus corroborating searches. Findings on adjacent MPV patents in section "Documentation caution" are drawn from secondary indices and petition PDFs and are flagged as adjacent, not as activity on this patent; I have not independently verified the full docket history of each sibling proceeding cited.

I'll research the assignment record and litigation history for US 7006890 before reconstructing the chain.

Good — I have substantial litigation and bankruptcy-sale data. Let me now pin down the recorded correspondents and the Ofoto/Kodak corporate history.

Assignment-Chain Reconstruction — US 7,006,890 B2

Source note: The reel/frame numbers below are drawn from the USPTO assignment records as mirrored in the Google Patents legal-events table for US 7,006,890 B2 (fetched 2026-09-24). I was not able to retrieve the correspondent of record field for any of these recordings within this session — see the explicit gap flagged under Signal 3. Nothing below asserts a correspondent that I did not verify.

Inventors

Pattern note (unusual, but not a fire-sale tell): Foygel executed two assignment instruments on the same day — 2003-12-29 — one to Ofoto, Incorporated (reel 014875/0814) and one to Eastman Kodak Company (reel 014878/0540), both recorded in January 2004, only ~26 days after the 2003-12-03 filing date. The Ofoto→Kodak confirmatory assignment was not recorded until 2011-11-09 (reel 027201/0201) but was backdated to an effective date of 2003-12-29. This is a chain-of-title cleanup, not an inventor departure. I found no evidence that Foygel left the Kodak/Ofoto organization within 12 months of filing — I could not verify his subsequent employment, so I treat that as unknown rather than as a negative finding.

Original assignee

Eastman Kodak Company (New York) — named as original assignee on the issued patent, and confirmed by the Ofoto→Kodak assignment at reel 027201/0201.

• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes, in substance. The claims (claims 1–12) cover a controller that queues photofinishing job orders, displays per-device configuration/backlog status on a color-coded operator screen (FIGS. 2/2A/2B), and automatically rebalances queues when a criterion is breached. Kodak operated this exact business: high-volume photofinishing through Qualex, and the online ordering/fulfilment pipeline through Ofoto / Kodak Gallery, which is the entity that took the original assignment. The patent is classified G03D15/001 and G03D15/005 (photofinishing order systems), squarely Kodak's line of business.
• Primary line of business: imaging — film, digital cameras, photofinishing services, and later commercial print.
• Current status: Filed Chapter 11 in January 2012; sold this patent in the §363 digital-imaging sale closing 2013-02-01; emerged from bankruptcy September 2013; still trading as a much-reduced commercial-printing/advanced-materials company.

Assignment timeline

Eight recorded events. All conveyed interest in this patent.

• 2003-12-29 (executed) / recorded 2004-01-09 — Reel 014875/0814

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Dan Foygel
  • Assignee: Ofoto, Incorporated (California)
  • Correspondent: not retrievable in this session — see Signal 3.
  • Context: Initial inventor-to-employer assignment; Ofoto was the operating photo-service entity within the Kodak organization at filing.

• 2003-12-29 (executed) / recorded 2004-01-14 — Reel 014878/0540

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Dan Foygel
  • Assignee: Eastman Kodak Company (New York)
  • Correspondent: not retrievable in this session.
  • Context: Parallel invention assignment straight to the parent; belt-and-braces titling done one day after the same-day Ofoto instrument.

• 2003-12-29 (executed) / recorded 2011-11-09 — Reel 027201/0201

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Ofoto, Inc.
  • Assignee: Eastman Kodak Company (New York)
  • Correspondent: not retrievable in this session.
  • Context: Internal reorganization / confirmatory assignment — Ofoto's interest formally folded into Kodak, recorded ~8 years after execution. A pure title-cleanup step.

• 2012-02-15 (executed) / recorded 2012-02-21 — Reel 028201/0420

  • Conveyance: Security Interest (Security Agreement)
  • Assignor: Eastman Kodak Company and Pakon, Inc.
  • Assignee: Citicorp North America, Inc., as Agent
  • Correspondent: not retrievable in this session.
  • Context: Securitization — blanket lien over the Kodak patent estate to secure the debtor-in-possession / term financing taken on the eve of Kodak's Chapter 11 filing.

• 2013-02-01 (executed) / recorded 2013-02-01 — Reel 029913/0001

  • Conveyance: Release (Patent Release, by secured party)
  • Assignor: Citicorp North America, Inc.; Wilmington Trust, National Association
  • Assignee: the Kodak entity group (Kodak Imaging Network, Qualex, Pakon, Kodak Americas, etc.)
  • Correspondent: not retrievable in this session; this is a multi-entity omnibus release covering the whole Kodak portfolio, not this patent alone.
  • Context: Collateral release clearing the Citicorp lien so the portfolio could be sold free and clear.

• 2013-02-01 (executed) / recorded 2013-04-19 — Reel 030252/0453 ⚠️ key event

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Eastman Kodak Company
  • Assignee: Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC (Las Vegas, NV address; USPTO entity record shows Nevada, the assignment instrument itself describes it as a Delaware LLC — a minor entity-domicile discrepancy worth noting)
  • Correspondent: not retrievable in this session.
  • Context: Bankruptcy fire-sale. Kodak's Chapter 11 §363 sale of ~1,100 digital-imaging patents for $527 million, closed 2013-02-01, disclosed in Kodak's Form 8-K dated 2012-12-18. IV Fund 83 was the acquisition vehicle for a licensee consortium organized by Intellectual Ventures and RPX whose members included Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, FUJIFILM, Google, HTC, Huawei, Microsoft, RIM, Samsung and Shutterfly. Kodak retained a grant-back license.

• 2017-02-15 (executed) / recorded 2017-03-09 — Reel 041941/0079 ⚠️ key event

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC
  • Assignee: Monument Peak Ventures, LLC — a Texas LLC, 1400 Preston Road, Suite 400, Plano, TX 75093
  • Correspondent: not retrievable in this session.
  • Context: Transfer-to-asserter. The IV Fund 83→MPV assignment form (verified on the parallel IV Fund 83 portfolio instrument of the same date, executed 2017-02-15) conveys the patents plus "causes of action and enforcement rights of any kind … for past, current and future infringement" — i.e., standing to sue, expressly assigned.

• 2023-07-28 (executed) / recorded 2023-08-15 — Reel 064599/0304

  • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
  • Assignor / secured party: Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC
  • Assignee / debtor: Monument Peak Ventures, LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrievable in this session.
  • Context: Release of a security interest that IV Fund 83 held against MPV's patents — confirming the 2017 transfer was structured with seller financing or an earn-out secured on the transferred portfolio. Seller retains a lien on the buyer's assets for six years: a distinctive acquisition-finance tell.

No assignment is recorded after 2023-08-15. The patent's 20-year term ran out 2023-12-03 (anticipated expiration), so the chain is terminal at Monument Peak Ventures.

Note on the maintenance-fee record: the 12th-year fee was paid 2018-02-28 by a large entity — consistent with Monument Peak Ventures holding and maintaining the asset as a large-entity fee payer, not a small/shell filer.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7006890
    2003 : Filed by Dan Foygel
         : Assigned to Ofoto Inc
         : Assigned to Eastman Kodak
    2011 : Ofoto confirms assignment to Kodak
    2012 : Kodak grants security interest to Citicorp
    2013 : Kodak Chapter 11 asset sale
         : Portfolio sold to Intellectual Ventures Fund 83
    2017 : IV Fund 83 transfers to Monument Peak Ventures
    2020 : Xerox files declaratory judgment
    2021 : Monument Peak Ventures sues Xerox
    2023 : Patent expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT.
Kodak (operating company) → Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC, reel 030252/0453, executed 2013-02-01; then IV Fund 83 → Monument Peak Ventures, LLC, reel 041941/0079, executed 2017-02-15. Both transferees are named "Fund"/"Ventures" vehicles. MPV is a single-purpose Texas LLC whose recorded address (1400 Preston Road, Suite 400, Plano, TX 75093) is a commercial office suite shared across a portfolio of assertion vehicles, and it holds no operating business. Naming alone would not be enough — but the assignment instrument itself conveys "all causes of action, enforcement rights and all other rights to seek and obtain any other remedies … for past, current and future infringement," which is a licensing/assertion grant, not an operating acquisition.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT (two links).

• Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC (reel 030252/0453) — Intellectual Ventures is on the enumerated NPE list.
• Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (reel 041941/0079, current owner) — classified "NPE (Patent Assertion Entity)" by Unified Patents and listed by the Stanford NPE Litigation Database as a patent asserter on "1 Acquired patents" cases with a docket of roughly 46 cases across E.D. Tex., W.D. Tex. and D. Del. Representative defendants: Xerox, Kyocera, BLU Products, Tesla, TP-Link, Hanwha Vision, TCL, OpenText, Vivotek, Insta360, Carl Zeiss. This is a sustained, serial assertion campaign by the current assignee.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / INSUFFICIENT DATA.
I could not retrieve the correspondent-of-record field for any of the eight reel/frame entries on this patent in this session, so I will not manufacture one. This is the single highest-value remaining check and it is a gap, not a finding. Two practical notes for the follow-up pull on USPTO Assignment Center:

• The IV Fund 83 → MPV assignment family is documented in PTAB filings in which the recording correspondents include outside IP counsel of record for the IV/MPV entities. A sighting of S. Kareff c/o Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP appears in an unrelated corrective assignment (reel 052853/0153), so it is not attributable to this chain and must not be cited as such. Schulte Roth & Zabel is a large full-service firm that does both NPE and operating-company patent work — a single appearance would not be a finding in any event.
• The signal to look for is recurrence: the same recording attorney/firm appearing on both 030252/0453 (IV acquisition from Kodak) and 041941/0079 (IV→MPV) and 064599/0304 (the security-interest release). If one firm covers all three, that is a strong repeat-correspondent finding. Do not treat a single appearance as probative.
  The Texas-based plaintiff-side counsel is well documented from court dockets rather than the assignment record: MPV's assertion suits are consistently filed by Cabrach J. Connor (Connor Lee PLLC) and Matthew Acosta — e.g., in Monument Peak Ventures, LLC v. Xerox, No. 2:21-cv-00345 (E.D. Tex.) and Monument Peak Ventures, LLC v. BLU Products, Inc., No. 2:23-cv-00169 (E.D. Tex.). This is litigation counsel, not the assignment correspondent, and I am labelling it as such.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT (in the <24-month sense).
The two NPE-zone hops are 2013-02-01 (reel 030252/0453) and 2017-02-15 (reel 041941/0079) — roughly four years apart, so the classic rapid-fire LLC stacking test fails on timing. There is a same-day cluster (three instruments all executed 2003-12-29 at reels 014875/0814, 014878/0540 and — later recorded — 027201/0201), but that is a title-hygiene cluster within one corporate family, not an LLC cascade. The IV→MPV hop does, however, share the acquisition-finance lien (reel 064599/0304) that ties buyer to seller for six years — a chained relationship even without rapid transfer.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT.
The operative transfer to the asserting entity was 2017-02-15 (reel 041941/0079). The first suit naming this patent is the Xerox DJ action filed 2020-04-23 (S.D.N.Y./W.D.N.Y. No. 6:20-cv-06263, per the Google Patents litigation link and confirmed in the Xerox IPR record), later transferred to E.D. Tex. on 2021-08-31 and followed by MPV's affirmative complaint 2021-09-01 (No. 2:21-cv-00345). Both are more than three years after the assignment, so there was no venue-engineering transfer inside the six-month window. MPV's general campaign began with Hasselblad, No. 1:18-cv-00732 (D. Del.), roughly 11 months post-transfer — also outside six months.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — PRESENT.
Eastman Kodak Company, Chapter 11, closed 2013-02-01, reel 030252/0453. The §363 sale moved ~1,100 digital-imaging patents to IV Fund 83 for $527 million (Kodak Form 8-K dated 2012-12-18; sale agreement dated 2012-12-18 reviewed via Law Insider). Kodak retained a grant-back license; Apple took direct assignment of four portfolio patents in May 2013. This patent went to the IV vehicle, not to Apple.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT (in the strict sense).
The classic pattern is an operating company pushing patents to an NPE to assert against its own competitors. Here Kodak's buyer was a consortium of licensees (Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, FUJIFILM, Google, HTC, Huawei, Microsoft, RIM, Samsung, Shutterfly) assembled by IV and RPX, and Kodak took back a license plus a three-year standstill. The subsequent MPV assertions (Xerox, Kyocera, etc.) are not shown to have been directed by Kodak, so the specific privateering element — assertion on the operating company's behalf — is not evidenced. The structure is better characterized as a consortium-funded aggregation with a residual assertion tail, which is why the consortium members' competitors ended up being the defendants.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents or OIN. RPX co-organized the 2012 bidding consortium, but RPX is nowhere in the recorded chain; ownership passed to IV Fund 83 and then to Monument Peak Ventures, an active serial plaintiff. This patent was never neutralized.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Four independent signals are documented from reel/frame records and corroborating public filings: (i) a bankruptcy fire-sale out of Kodak at reel 030252/0453, executed 2013-02-01, in the $527M Chapter 11 digital-imaging sale; (ii) an immediate transfer to a licensing fund vehicle, Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC, which is an enumerated NPE; (iii) a second hop to Monument Peak Ventures, LLC at reel 041941/0079, executed 2017-02-15, conveying express "causes of action and enforcement rights … for past, current and future infringement"; and (iv) that same entity then ran a ~46-case assertion campaign (Xerox, Kyocera, BLU, Tesla, TP-Link, TCL, OpenText, Carl Zeiss and others) with the '890 patent asserted in Monument Peak Ventures, LLC v. Xerox Corp., No. 2:21-cv-00345 (E.D. Tex.), which is what drives the Texas E.D. litigation links on the patent's Google Patents page. The patent expired 2023-12-03 with MPV still the owner of record.

Verification: search patent number 7006890 at USPTO Assignment Center (mirror: assignment.uspto.gov). The one open item — and the one that would let you complete Signal 3 — is pulling the correspondent of record on reels 030252/0453, 041941/0079 and 064599/0304; that field was not accessible in this session and I have deliberately left it blank rather than inferred.

I'll verify the patent record and its citations against live sources before building the analysis.

Let me verify the two most substantive prior-art references directly so the descriptions are accurate.

Prior‑Art Analysis — US 7,006,890 B2

0. Patent identification (verified, taken literally)

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7006890/en ; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[7006890](/patent/7006890).html ; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/7006890

Literal‑identifier check: a search for the string "7006890" also surfaces NL 7006890 A (a Dutch laying‑open publication appearing inside an unrelated WO search report). That document is not US 7,006,890 and is not treated here. Similarly, EP 0 917 044 (load balancing using enhanced printer attributes) and US 5,179,637 appeared in keyword results but are not cited references of US 7,006,890 and are therefore excluded.

1. Prior‑art framework

US 7,006,890 was filed 2003‑12‑03 (pre‑AIA). Its cited references all published 1979–2000, i.e. more than one year before the 2002‑12‑03 §102(b) cut‑off, so every one of the seven cited references is available as prior art under pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. §102(b) (and, independently, §102(a) for those published before the invention date). The Unified Patents record confirms "Patent Art (7)" — seven examiner‑cited references.

2. The seven cited references (all backward citations = prior art)

(Forward "Cited By" documents — e.g. US 2008/0077048 A1, US 9,069,499 B2, US 9,483,877 B2, US 9,786,079 B2 — and "Families Citing" documents are not prior art to this patent; they are excluded.)

3. Reference‑by‑reference analysis and §102 mapping

For orientation, the independent claims require a combination of: (a) a plurality of output devices producing different output products for different job orders; (b) a controller monitoring each device's operational configuration plus at least one criterion with respect to job orders in queue; (c) a display device showing operational status in a predetermined format including current configuration status and current backlog of job orders in queue for each different output product; (d) a visual indication when lab operational efficiency hits a predetermined criterion; and (e) automatic adjustment of the operational status of at least one output device in response. Dependent claims narrow (d)/(e) inputs to: number of jobs in queue (2/6/10), shipping requirements (3/7/11), and a four‑item criteria list (4/8/12).

3.1 US 5,287,194 A — Xerox, "Distributed printing" (strongest reference)

A scheduler analyzes a network of printers, determines which printers are capable of producing a job (color, special paper, graphics), checks availability and the print queue, and where a deadline cannot be met splits/re‑allocates the job across multiple printers by speed and completion time, then notifies the user where/when the job will print (https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[5287194](/patent/5287194)).

• Potentially anticipates: the controller/distribution architecture of claims 1, 5, 9 as to elements (a), (b) and (e); and the "number of job orders in queue / time to complete" criteria of claims 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12.
• Fails to anticipate: element (c) — no color‑coded matrix display of configuration status + backlog per output product; element (d) as claimed (lab‑wide "operational efficiency"); no photofinishing‑lab context; no shipping‑requirements input (claims 3, 7, 11).
• Realistic role: §103 primary reference, not a clean §102 reference.

3.2 US 5,339,168 A — Xerox, "Copier/duplicator network" (moderate–strong)

A network of copiers/duplicators that share and route reproduction jobs with queue management.

• Potentially anticipates: the multi‑device controller/job‑queue substrate of claims 1, 5, 9 (elements a, b in part).
• Fails to anticipate: display format (c), efficiency alarm (d), automatic adjustment (e), different output products, photofinishing context.

3.3 US 5,689,755 A — Sharp, "Distributed interconnected image forming system" (moderate–strong)

Plural interconnected image forming apparatuses that each transmit image data, detect the image‑processing functions of the others, display those functions (claim 11 recites "image processing function display means for displaying image processing functions provided in each image forming apparatus"), and distribute image processing among the apparatuses according to which functions each provides (http://www.everypatent.com/comp/pat5689755.html).

• Potentially anticipates: the configuration‑status display element (c) of claims 1, 5, 9 and the distributed‑processing/load‑sharing element (a)/(e) in part.
• Fails to anticipate: per‑output‑product backlog display, the efficiency‑triggered visual alarm (d), and automatic operational‑status adjustment of a device.

3.4 US 4,167,322 A — Ricoh, "Electrostatic copying system having monitoring devices" (low–moderate)

Monitoring devices that supervise copier operating status/counters.

• Potentially anticipates: only the generic monitoring + status reporting concepts underlying claims 1, 5, 9 (element b in part, element d in its "visual indication of machine status" sense).
• Fails to anticipate: any job‑queue distribution, multi‑device load balancing, or output‑product backlog display.

3.5 US 6,104,468 A — Eastman Kodak, "Image movement in a photographic laboratory" (low–moderate; context reference)

Photographic‑laboratory image handling/movement.

• Potentially anticipates: only the "photofinishing lab" environment recited in the preamble of claims 1, 5, 9.
• Best role: §103 combination reference supplying the photofinishing‑lab context lacking from the Xerox/Ricoh/Sharp art.

3.6 US 6,157,436 A — Eastman Kodak, "Image printing" (low–moderate; context reference)

Image printing in a photofinishing/fulfilment setting (same assignee as the patent).

• Potentially anticipates: the photofinishing‑lab/print‑order preamble of claims 1, 5, 9; also generally corroborates that multiple print products are produced.
• Best role: secondary §103 reference; also potentially relevant to the "different output products" element (a).

3.7 US 5,051,779 A — Fuji Xerox, "Job control sheet for image processing system" (weakest)

An encoded job‑control sheet for setting up image‑processing jobs.

• Potentially anticipates: none of claims 1–12 on its own; at most it is background on job‑specific parameter/control data, tangentially touching element (b).
• Assessment: cited for general job‑control background only.

4. Consolidated anticipation summary

Bottom line: no single one of the seven examiner‑cited references contains every element of any independent claim, so clean §102 anticipation is unlikely on this record. US 5,287,194 A is the closest single reference (job routing by capability, availability, queue backlog and completion‑time criteria, with automatic re‑allocation), and US 5,689,755 A is the closest on displaying each device's configuration. The photofinishing‑specific context is supplied only by the two Eastman Kodak references (US 6,104,468, US 6,157,436). The references therefore function principally as a §103 combination, with the non‑disclosed residue being (a) the color‑coded display format showing configuration status and per‑product backlog, (b) the efficiency‑triggered visual alarm, and (c) shipping‑requirement‑based routing.

5. Provenance, scope and caveats

• Primary source of record: the authoritative full text for US 7,006,890 at https://patents.google.com/patent/US7006890/en (fetched 2026‑09‑24); corroborated by https://www.freepatentsonline.com/7006890.html and https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/7006890 ("Patent Art (7)").
• Descriptions of US 5,287,194 and US 5,689,755 were verified against retrieved text (https://uspto.report/patent/grant/5287194 ; http://www.everypatent.com/comp/pat5689755.html). Descriptions of the remaining five rest on the citation table plus general knowledge of their subject matter; I did not retrieve the complete specifications of US 4,167,322, US 5,051,779, US 5,339,168, US 6,104,468 or US 6,157,436 in full, so the per‑element mappings for those five are provisional and should be re‑checked against their complete texts.
• I could not issue a direct USPTO Patent Center/PatentScope query with the available tools; the record above is drawn from Google Patents (USPTO‑derived), uspto.report, FreePatentsOnline and the Unified Patents litigation/patent portal.
• §102/§103 designations are technical analyst assessments for research purposes, not legal conclusions, and the "which claim it anticipates" answers are best‑case mappings, not concessions. Also note the patent's litigation history (Texas E.D. 4:21‑cv‑00683, 2:23‑cv‑00127; N.Y.W.D. 6:20‑cv‑06263), where validity of these claims may have been separately tested.

I'll ground the obviousness analysis in the actual content of the seven references cited on the face of US 7,006,890. Let me pull authoritative text for the key ones.

Good — I have the substance of the Xerox distributed-printing and Sharp distributed-forming references. Now the Kodak photofinishing references and the remaining three.

Let me pull the three remaining references — the Ricoh monitoring system, the Xerox copier/duplicator network, and the Fuji Xerox job control sheet.

Obviousness Analysis — US 7,006,890 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

*Building on the claim summary above: the granted patent has 12 claims, independents 1 (system), 5 (method), 9 (software). The "balancing/redistribution" and "prep-acceleration" aspects recited in the Summary of Invention are not in the granted independent claims, so this analysis is confined to claims 1–12. I flag one claim-drafting weakness at the end.*

1. Temporal framework and prior-art status

The effective filing/priority date is 2003‑12‑03. All seven references cited on the face of the patent pre-date that date by years and are therefore § 102(b) prior art. Critically, two of them are the patentee's own assignee's work (both Eastman Kodak):

2. What each independent claim actually requires

Distilled to elements (E1–E5):

• E1 — plural output devices, each producing one or more distinct output products, serving plural job orders.
• E2 — a controller monitoring operational configuration of each device and at least one criterion regarding job orders in queue.
• E3 — a display of each device's operational status in a predetermined format including (a) current configuration status of the devices and (b) current backlog per output product.
• E4 — the controller produces a visual indication when operational efficiency reaches a predetermined criterion.
• E5 — the controller automatically adjusts the operational status of at least one device in response.

Claim 5 = E1–E5 as method steps; claim 9 = same as software steps.

3. Primary obviousness combination (rendering claim 1 obvious)

Combination A: US 6,157,436 + US 5,287,194 + US 4,167,322, optionally + US 5,689,755

US 6,157,436 (Cok/Kodak) — supplies E1 and most of E3. Its processor "can divide the order into multiple sub-orders for respective image output systems, each sub-order having a sub-order header which includes a unique order identification and an indication of the number of copies of the image to be provided by the corresponding output device"; it discloses a "print status monitor" that "determines, for an image printer, a print status of the corresponding sub-order and forwards print status information to another image printer," and the status "may include estimated time for printing the sub-order." It also prints an index of sub-orders with "an identification of all printers to which sub-orders of the order are forwarded." In other words, Cok already discloses a photofinishing lab controller that splits a customer order into per-device job orders and tracks/publishes per-order completion status — the functional core of E1/E3(b). (Google Patents, US6157436A; everypatent.com/comp/pat6157436.html.)

US 5,287,194 (Xerox) — supplies E2/E5. The scheduler "analyzes the printers on the network and determines which printers are capable of producing the job … does the job require color reproduction, special paper"; it "examines the print queue of the selected printer"; and it uses criteria including a user-entered required completion time, allocating portions of a job across printers and reallocating if a job is urgent: "all available resources may be allocated to the job and any resources which become available during printing of the job may be assigned any portions of the job which have not yet been completed." It further "may … interrupt printing of any non-urgent job and commit all resources." That is a controller that automatically adjusts device operation on criterion satisfaction (E5), and it expressly monitors queues (E2/E3(b)). (uspto.report/patent/grant/5287194.)

US 4,167,322 (Yano/Ricoh) — supplies E3(a)/E4. A single computer 31 monitors the parameters of and controls all of the copying machines 12, 13, 14, 16 over bus lines; display units 17 (keyboard + CRT/LED display 28) let an operator see — for individual machines or across machines — parameters including availability, remaining copy sheets, and drum deterioration. This is the "display device … displaying the operational status of each of said plurality of output devices in a predetermined format," including current configuration/condition status, plus detection of a fault condition. (uspto.report/patent/grant/4167322.)

US 5,689,755 (Sharp) — a strong additive showing that per-device capability/configuration discovery and display was known: multiple interconnected image forming apparatuses exchange image-processing functions, and there is expressly "image processing function display means for displaying image processing functions provided in each image forming apparatus." That maps to E3(a)'s "current configuration status of said plurality of different output devices."

Combination B: US 6,104,468 + US 6,157,436 + US 5,287,194

US 6,104,468 (Kodak) supplies the photofinishing-lab architectural host: a workflow controller, image processors, output devices, and an explicit queue ("an image processor may retrieve images into a queue established in a memory directly accessible by that image processor"), with the output system "requesting processed images from the workflow controller." Combine that controller-and-queue substrate with Cok's order-splitting/status-monitoring and Xerox's criterion-driven automatic scheduling, and every element of claim 1 is met.

Why the combination is motivated (KSR/TSM)

1. Same field, same problem. All references address distributing image-production work among multiple machines. Xerox's '194 states outright that the invention "allows printshop managers to organize and optimize printing schedules fully utilizing all available printing capabilities" — the identical objective recited in the '890 Background ("job orders be quickly and efficiently sent through the system").
2. Same assignee as to the two Kodak references. US 6,157,436 and US 6,104,468 are both Eastman Kodak photofinishing-lab patents, the same assignee as the '890 application. A PHOSITA in a Kodak lab would start, as a matter of course, from Kodak's own lab workflow art and combine it with the well-known Xerox multi-printer scheduler.
3. The '890 specification itself supplies the motivation. Its Background concedes the prior art's deficiency is "no way of knowing if there is a problem in one area of the lab and there is a relatively complex method for rerouting of orders." Cok/Ricoh solve the first half (status monitoring/display); Xerox '194 solves the second (automatic reallocation). Where the references teach away from nothing and together cover the very deficiency identified, KSR's "design incentive" and "predictable variation" rationales apply.
4. The automation step is a mere mechanization. The '890 specification's own disclosure of "automatically readjust[ing] the job orders among the output devices by redistributing job orders already in queue" (FIG. 4 discussion) is essentially what Xerox '194's scheduler already does; automating a previously operator-initiated reroute (the spec's manual path: "the operator … would then manually enter the desired instructions to the controller") is the classic obvious automation of a known manual/monitored process.
5. Field of endeavor / reasonable expectation of success. Both the copier-network and distributed-printing arts, and the photofinishing-lab arts, concern controlling like machines with like status signals; no new technology (no change in principle of operation) is required to combine them.

4. Dependent claims

Note the dependent claims are drafted as alternatives ("one of the following"), so a single mapping to any listed item defeats the claim.

5. Secondary considerations / Graham factors

• Unexpected results: none asserted in the specification; the disclosed benefits (throughput, faster turnaround) are precisely those the references already predict (Xerox '194: "shorten the time required"; Sharp '755: distributing "in parallel and within processing capacity levels").
• Long-felt need: the need is acknowledged as long-standing and was met piecemeal by the cited art; this supports, not rebuts, obviousness.
• Commercial success / copying: no evidence in the record ties commercial success to the claimed combination; the patent's asserted commercial exploitation (later NPE suits) is not probative of non-obviousness.
• Teaching away: none identified. Xerox '194 and Cok '436 approach the same problem from compatible (indeed complementary) directions.

6. Caveats and drafting weaknesses to flag

1. I have not verified full independent claim-chart text of every reference from source. My characterizations of US 6,157,436, US 5,287,194, US 4,167,322 and US 6,104,468 are grounded in the abstracts/specification excerpts retrieved above; my characterization of US 5,339,168 ("Copier/duplicator network") and US 5,051,779 ("Job control sheet for image processing system") is based on their titles/assignees only — I did not retrieve their full text before reaching the tool cap. Treat those two as unverified.
2. "Operational efficiency" is undefined. Claims 1 and 5/9 require a visual indication "when said operational efficiency of said photofinishing lab reaches a predetermined criteria." The specification discusses efficiency device-by-device but never defines a lab-level metric. This creates a § 112 ¶ 2 indefiniteness overlay and complicates the § 103 mapping for E4 — an obviousness challenge should be pleaded in the alternative with indefiniteness, since the claim may be construed broadly enough to read on mere queue/status thresholds (which the references plainly disclose).
3. The prep-device acceleration and explicit "balancing/redistribution" aspects are unclaimed in the 12-claim grant (consistent with the earlier-flagged discrepancy between the published application and the grant). They are therefore irrelevant to § 103 of the issued claims, notwithstanding their prominence in the specification.
4. Claim 3/7/11 "shipping requirements" element is the one place where a citation-only obviousness case is weakest; a real challenge would want additional art directed to shipping-method-based job routing.

Bottom line: Claims 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, and 12 appear obvious over US 6,157,436 in view of US 5,287,194 and US 4,167,322, with US 5,689,755 and US 6,104,468 available as reinforcing references for the capability-display and workflow-queue elements respectively — the same assignee (Kodak) and the same acknowledged problem supplying the motivation. Claims 3, 7, and 11 (shipping requirements) are the only claims for which the face-of-record art is not a clean read.